It's sexy it's small and it doesn't make a single noise. It runs Mac OS Mojave
Oh and it's fast like really fast
What is it? And how did we make it? Well, let's travel back to 1985 and find out or I mean like last week
So this model of a case that is completely passively cooled
There are no fans whatsoever is really really neat
But we need to put a computer in here and the computer that we're going to use the computer that this case is designed for
Is, of course, the Intel nuc now we have done one Hackintosh build already with an eighth-generation
Bean Canyon Intel nuc, but that was a really low-end kind of i5 variant. This is the higher end. i7 variant
It's a quad core processor
With eight threads and it has a base clock of 2.7 gigahertz
with a turbo frequency of 4.5 gigahertz
So it should be actually really really fast and it's not a hexa core processor like the i5 Mac Mini
Which means it probably won't out bench that but it should be relatively close this whole system build
All in max price is going to be about
850 dollars out the door and Apple charges 1100 for basically that same computer
So hopefully we can out bench it but we've got a power supply here in the box
It's kind of large but even still with the power supply the entire system is significantly smaller than a Mac Mini
Which is no longer really all that small
And then we have the little tiny nuc right here
Now if you get an i5 variant or an i3 variant one of the lower end options, there are two model designations
there's BEK and
BEH, this is a BEH. It's a little taller and it allows you to fit a 2.5 inch SATA drive inside
So there you go. We're going to pull this open and
Basically remove this computer from the case so we can stick it in the large one
Now that we have this cute little motherboard removed from the original case
we ditched the original case and the antennas that come with that case and we basically only salvaged the little dual microphone cable assembly and
Of course the motherboard itself now we have the CPU cooler on the top and it's kind of a interesting arrangement
We have one screw that comes off right here and then two captive screws
And of course our fan header, this is a blower style cooler. So you have fan
You have a fan on the top here and ear there's an air intake air gets sucked into the fan and then it gets
Exhausted through this radiator on the back of the nuc
so if we unplug this little
fan header right there
We can pull this assembly right out and you'll see there are a couple of copper heat pipes that are touching the actual
CPU die heat is transferred into these copper pipes
They go to this radiator and air blows it out, but we don't need any of that
so we're removing this entire assembly and then you'll see that there is
thermal compound on this main die and not on these two extra ones when we put this into our new case we actually are going
To apply thermal compound onto all three sections. So let's clean it up and do that now
This case is actually pretty simple to work on you remove this bottom cover by removing these four screws and when we pull this open
You'll see that it's actually really simple. We have a heat spreader our little
Heat block right there. I would not expect it doesn't look like copper
It may be nickel plated copper
But my guess is that it's just aluminium, in any case, it should be well sufficient for the dissipation that the Nuc puts out
it's a pretty
Power efficient nook. The TDP is quite low and that's why we can do this entirely passively on such a small form-factor
There are much larger cases. I've done a hackintosh build in the past with a mini ITX
Build with an intel core i7 that was a 90 watt CPU
90 watt TDP CPU puts out a lot of heat and it was able to handle it just fine
But it had these massive massive walls and it was quite a large case
This one is very tiny which works for the Nuc's tiny size and heat output
So we're going to first install the dual microphone assembly and you should have enough adhesive on these to just stick them back in
If you don't want to put your microphones in that's fine, but you know what?
They say smoke them if you got them and now it's time to install our thermal paste a casa
Which is the company that makes this case includes some thermal compound in here
I can't imagine it's excellent
But the best and worst thermal compounds usually only have a variance of a couple degrees and this isn't some ultra high performance machine
So I don't really care. This is also the most crude application you've ever seen of thermal paste and people are gonna freak out
It's fine
I think about thermal paste is that you really have to go over the top to use too much and
When you're applying directly to the die when there is no heat spreader
It's actually better to have a little more than you think you might on a standard desktop CPU
so once we've got that applied we are going to flip it upside down and
We are going to place it inside the case. So
We have to orient ourselves the right way
Which is this way and you will notice that you lose your microSD slot in the process. Oh, what a shame
Everyone loves the micro SD slot Nah that doesn't matter
So we're going to kind of just insert that into place. It might take a little wiggling to get there
But we. I can feel the thermal paste slipping around and there we go
We just screw this in and then we're almost done
Okay. Now it's time to install our remaining components there really aren't that many left we have the
Microphone header which we're going to insert now and then we have our RAM and our SSD
Now these don't come with the Intel nuc kit
You have to buy them separately and that's kind of why the price of the machine is quite low
You can buy pre-configured machines
but it's generally not quite as good of a deal and
Given that it's super easy to install you might as well just do it yourself. So we have here 16 gigs of
Memory from Kingston. This is just Kingston's value line of memory. It's not super high-end
The clock speed is quite low. I believe it's 2400 megahertz, but it's super fine for what we are doing
And it should not really in any way impact our benchmarks at all. So we're gonna insert that push it down and we're done now
The SSD is a little different. These SSDs can get extremely hot nvme SSDs, especially when there's no airflow
and so what we're going to do is we are going to add a
heatsink to the top of the SSD to kind of
Absorb some of the heat so that it doesn't stay all inside of this tiny little form factor
It's still going to run a little hot but it shouldn't be hot enough to shorten the life of the SSD
So let's do that now
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All righty now, we install the SSD in the slot quite simply we just remember our little
M2 screw right there. We insert the SSD in
And then push down and that's all there is to it and we are pretty much done
all we have to do is reattach the rear panel i/o and the top panel and
That's it. Pretty easy
Okay, so now we've got it assembled and we have to make a decision but we want it vertical or do we want it horizontal
The case can operate in both directions and there are these cool Art Deco looking end plates that you standoffs
They look really really nice either direction is supported
I'm going to do vertical just because I think there will be more heat dissipation that way as hot air rises
So it should be a little bit better for cooling but either orientation should work
Okay, so that's all done and it looks pretty cool the question is does it stay cool
Well, we'll find out once we get Mac OS installed and run some benchmarks compared to the Mac Mini speaking of Mac OS
How would you do that? Let's find out. A lot of people ask me why I haven't created a step-by-step
Tutorial on how to make a hackintosh. There are a few reasons, but one of the major ones is that there is no one-size-fits-all
Hackintosh installation. The reality is that it depends greatly on your hardware and your BIOS on your motherboard
There's several factors
and so when I do a hackintosh build on my channel I try to do ones that someone else has already done and created a
Tutorial for so that people who are less experienced know where to go to find exact instructions on how to do it
But if you know how to do a hackintosh if you know how to make one
They're generally pretty easy and they all operate on the same principles first
You need a version of Mac less and you use a real Mac to get it
So you download the operating system from the Mac App Store and then you use create install media
Which is a command that you run on a Mac
We're here on Apple's website and they tell you how to do it and it basically sticks the operating system on a bootable USB Drive
Bootable to a Mac now. We need to modify that bootable installation to make sure that we can boot it on a PC
and so we use this piece of software called clover efi and clifford efi replaces the mac OS
bootloader with a UEFI boot loader the UEFI
basically is
a firmware interface what allows the bios of the
Motherboards bios to communicate with the operating system and the hardware that's mixed in between so clover is very frequently updated
It's open-source. There are updates. There was one 18 minutes ago
So it's very frequently updated supports a bunch of hardware and it's open source, and it's excellent and it's free
So you download clover efi and then you modify your install
Drive by making it bootable on Mac OS
Once you've done that you're going to need a couple of different drivers Mac OS uses drivers, but unlike Windows
They're kind of built into the OS. Sometimes you need new audio drivers or Ethernet drivers or
Drivers that have been built by the community or sometimes by apple but are
Longer supported that allow you to use all of the hardware inside of your Mac
If you don't have the right drivers some stuff won't work
You can boot into Mac OS it will it will kind of work but your Ethernet your Bluetooth and Wi-Fi may not work
So you download the correct texts you place them on this drive and that's it. You're ready to go now
I do typically what's called the vanilla install
I download all of these parts separately because I'm more experienced and that's how I do it, Tony
Mac is a community that makes tools that are kind of plug-and-play
They find all of the drivers that you need all of the text that you need and install them
Onto this USB Drive that it makes for you the hackintosh pros don't really like Tony Mac because it's not open-source
They use closed source software. They're a little bit spooky sketchy sometimes and so most people recommend a vanilla install
But Tony Mac is a great resource for finding
step-by-step tutorials on how to create a hackintosh if you want to go one step further and this gets really spooky you can go to
well
really popular hardware configurations
Like the Intel Nuc one that people build a lot is such a popular piece of hardware that there are people that will create
Pre-made itched ISOs that you basically write to a USB Drive. So it's alright it includes the operating system
This is a great option. If you don't have a Mac, it includes the operating system
It includes all the modified files that includes all the the qex and the drivers. It's completely ready to go
You just download it
you put it on the USB Drive and you're set the problem is is that
You have to trust the sources
You're getting them from this is one that has been recommended several times on forums all over the place. It's from this website
That's completely in Chinese. It could be safe. I don't know
I generally would not recommend downloading some random operating system where you don't know where it comes from
Stick with the open-source tools that are tried-and-true and I'll link to a couple of guides that tell you how to do it step-by-step
And are really logical and simple process
Now that we've got the system up and running we got to see how it performs and I must say I'm impressed
Now the goal is to perform comparably to the i5 Mac Mini
Which is a hexacore 6 core processor our little nuc Hackintosh is only a quad-core processor
so as you might surmise it doesn't quite agile the i5 Mac Mini, but it does get quite close and it absolutely
Brutalizes the base model. i3 Mac Mini the best part
Is that while the Mac minis fans start screaming for air with CPU core temperatures reaching nearly
100 degrees Celsius our little nuc hangs out at a perfectly chill 60 degrees C
The case is hardly even warm to the touch
Sadly this means that while we theoretically have the thermal overhead to squeeze a lot more performance out of this little machine
There are no overclocking options inside of the nuc's BIOS
I'd assume that this is a result of the tiny little external power supply
Not being up to the task of even sustaining very high turbo frequencies. Let alone overclocking furthermore
The machine is kind of a prebuilt purpose-built config, and I don't think Intel ever imagined people
Jamming this tiny little computer into a much larger case with exponentially more thermal overhead
But while no overclocking capabilities is a bit of a bummer. That's still okay because it performs extremely
Closely to the i5 Mac Mini which when SPECT identically is more than double the price tag
our little nuc only has one Thunderbolt 3 port unlike the Mac minis four
But it works perfectly in Mac OS so as long as you don't hop plug devices, you can even run an E-GPU
Which is pretty sweet if you're looking for some extra graphics overhead, although you might want to do that on a system
That isn't completely silent. Maybe the nuc in its stock case on the plus side
The nuc does have four USB ports and the Mac Mini only has two now not everything is rainbows and butterflies
While most stuff like iMessage find my Mac and the App Store worked excellently Bluetooth and Wi-Fi
Do not so handoff continuity
That's a no-go unless you buy an Apple supported wireless card
which isn't that hard but it is an extra step and
Expense and even though Hackintosh are about as easy to build and maintain as they've ever been they're not plug-and-play
Tinkering is required and you should expect to need to do more maintenance when updating than you would with a regular Mac
Now is a couple hours of time a year worth $800 to you
I don't know that's up to you to decide most people would probably say yes
But regardless, I think it's a pretty neat machine and as a completely silent computer
I think it's a prime candidate for a hi-fi home theater or office setup in an area that Apple doesn't even really serve
speaking of prime this prime ad space is occupied by
Nobody look I know ad bricks can get fatiguing
And so I try not to do them all the time, but I sure would appreciate it
If you would like this video subscribe and share it with your friends. Thank you so much for watching and as always stay snazzy
Yeah, well we're a pretty bad Channel so